Westies

by T. J. English

  But those days were long gone now, lost in a haze of angry, bitter memories.

  According to the prosecution, Coonan was guilty of extortion, mail fraud, illegal gambling, drug dealing, loansharking, kidnapping, multiple murders, and attempted murders, all as leader of the Westies. To Featherstone, this was only half the story. Greed, treachery, betrayal—in traditional organized crime circles these were far greater crimes. And in Featherstone’s mind, Coonan had already been charged with these crimes, tried and found guilty.

  The sentence? Death. The executors of this sentence? Some of the very people Coonan now found himself seated next to, who, along with Featherstone, had been plotting his murder right up until their arrests for this trial.

  As the witness looked out at the eight defendants seated in a large phalanx before the cold, imposing glare of U.S. District Court, his emotions shifted once again. Despite the enmity he had for many of these people and the justification he felt he had for testifying against them, he couldn’t get used to the idea of being on the stand. Every time he thought about what he was doing he began to sweat. But as his testimony proceeded under the calm, probing tutelage of the assistant U.S. attorney, something came to him, something that seemed so obvious he couldn’t believe it hadn’t crossed his mind before.

  For the first time since he’d begun his long life of crime, he, Mickey Featherstone, was in a position to tell the truth.

  There was some satisfaction in that.

  “Mr. Featherstone,” said Warren, “let me direct your attention to a night on or around January 18, 1978. Did you have an occasion to know personally a Rickey Tassiello?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “I knew him all his life, since we grew up in the neighborhood. I got arrested with him once.”

  “Do you know what Rickey Tassiello did for a living?”

  “He pulled armed robberies and he gambled.”

  “Do you know how he supported his gambling?”

  “With money from armed robberies and money from shylocks.”

  In the early hours of the afternoon, Warren had begun to lead Featherstone through some of the more gruesome charges in the indictment. Tall and frail, with hopelessly frazzled light-brown hair and a pale complexion, Warren was dressed in a white, frilly blouse and plaid skirt. She didn’t look like the sort of person who would be comfortable talking about murder and dismemberment. She looked more like a grade school teacher, or a librarian. Yet, as she’d pointed out in her opening statement to the jury, throughout the trial she would be enumerating many horrible acts of violence. One of the worst, she cautioned, would be Act of Racketeering Number Nine: the Murder of Richard “Rickey” Tassiello.

  Before Featherstone took the stand, the court had heard testimony on the Tassiello murder from Arthur Tassiello, a brother of the deceased, and from Anton “Tony” Lucich, another Westie who, along with Featherstone, had become a government witness. Arthur Tassiello, a bartender on the West Side of Manhattan in 1977, told of meetings he had with Jimmy Coonan about his brother. According to Tassiello, Coonan told him that Rickey was behind on his illicit “shylock” loans to the tune of $7,000, and he wanted the Tassiello family to either get Rickey to pay up or settle his debt for him.

  It was Arthur who finally came up with the money. When he did, he pleaded with Coonan to stop making loans to his little brother because, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, Rickey was a “sick gambler.”

  A few months later, Coonan showed up at Arthur’s place of business again. This time Rickey owed him $6,000. They worked out a payment schedule where Arthur would try to get his brother to pay $100 a week.

  Months passed. Coonan showed up again. Rickey Tassiello had stopped making his payments. Exasperated, Arthur said there was nothing more he could do.

  After Arthur Tassiello left the stand, Tony Lucich testified about the events following Rickey’s murder, which took place in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment at 747 10th Avenue. According to Lucich, he’d entered the apartment after the deed was done and helped cut up the body.

  So the jury already knew there had been a murder, and they knew it was bloody. But neither Arthur Tassiello nor Lucich had witnessed the act itself.

  Enter Mickey Featherstone.

  The Market Diner, 11th Avenue and 43rd Street. Late afternoon, January 18, 1978. Featherstone and Coonan were sitting at the counter when Coonan got a phone call. He took the call and came back, telling Featherstone they had business to take care of at Tom’s Pub, just a few blocks away. In the car on the way over, Coonan told Featherstone they were going to pick up Rickey Tassiello and take him to Tony Lucich’s apartment.

  Featherstone knew all about Rickey’s outstanding shylock loans. He also knew that when Jimmy Coonan had a problem with one of his loanshark customers, he usually dealt with it swiftly and brutally. He knew this because he’d been there many times and helped administer the punishment.

  But this time he didn’t want to be a part of it. He’d known Rickey Tassiello all his life and couldn’t see why the kid had to be killed, and he told Coonan this. “While we were in the car,” said Featherstone quietly from the witness stand, “Jimmy was telling me he’s not gonna do nothin’ to Rickey. He just wanted to warn him. And he and Tony were gonna offer him a job so he could pay his loan.”

  They arrived at Tom’s Pub on 55th Street and 9th Avenue. Jimmy went over to Rickey, who was seated with a group of friends, and said, “Listen, everything is alright. We just want you to go up and apologize to Tony.” Tassiello had pulled a gun on Lucich and his wife the night before.

  “Yeah,” said Rickey. “Okay, I’ll go up and see Tony.”

  Ten minutes later the three of them arrived at Tony Lucich’s 10th Avenue apartment. Mickey and Rickey sat down on the living room couch and Jimmy headed for a back room. “I’ll be right back,” said Jimmy. “I’m going to get Tony. He’s in bed, sick.” After Jimmy had left, Mickey got up and headed into the kitchenette area. “You want anything?” he asked Rickey. “I’m gonna get some Perrier water.” Rickey said no.

  As Mickey was opening the refrigerator, he glanced through a doorway that opened onto the hall and saw Jimmy heading back towards the living room by himself. Then he heard the familiar sound of a round being loaded into the chamber of a gun. “What the fuck’s going on?” he heard Rickey shout from the other room. “What are you doing!?”

  The next thing he knew Rickey was running into the kitchenette area. Mickey heard the silencer go off and saw a shot hit the wall. Rickey started to reach for some knives in a rack on the kitchen wall. “No!” shouted Mickey, as he grabbed Rickey to keep him from getting at the knives.

  Just then, Jimmy stepped up behind Rickey and shot him in the back of the head. Rickey slumped down against the wall and the refrigerator, and Jimmy shot him twice more as he lay on the floor.

  On the witness stand, Featherstone hardly moved, and his voice kept getting lower and lower. Four times the judge and prosecutor had to ask him to speak up, to enunciate more clearly. He told the jury that during the shooting he’d been hit in the head with something metallic, which later proved to be the casing from one of the bullets. But he didn’t know that at the time. He thought maybe he’d been shot, so he panicked and ran for the door. At that moment, Tony Lucich walked in.

  Both Lucich and Coonan told Featherstone to calm down. Together they dragged the body into the bathroom and dumped it face up in the tub. Then, said Featherstone, Coonan told him to stick a knife in Tassiello’s heart, just to make sure.

  “And what did you do?” asked prosecutor Warren.

  “I stuck a knife in his chest.”

  They went to the Market Diner after that. Jimmy and Tony sat in the dining area and ate a hearty meal, laughing and joking with the other patrons they knew. In the bar area, Mickey watched from a distance, drinking whiskey after whiskey until everything that was happening got blurry and quiet.

  Around two o’clock in the morning,
they went back to the apartment. Jimmy got some big kitchen knives with serrated edges, went into the bathroom and began hacking apart Rickey Tassiello’s body. There was blood everywhere—the floors, the walls, the tub.

  “About this time,” said Featherstone, “Tony broke out some black plastic bags, and I started throwing up. I put a handkerchief over my mouth. Jimmy was joking about me not being able to take it …

  “I vomited in the bathroom, in the toilet bowl. When he was goofing on me, I left the bathroom and went to the kitchen sink and finished vomiting in there. I sat on the couch in the living room and they called me in …

  “I went in, and Jimmy was cutting his head off.”

  “What was done with the body parts as they were removed?” asked the prosecutor.

  “They were put in the black plastic garbage bags.”

  “Who put them in the plastic bags?”

  “Me and Tony.”

  The plastic bags were then loaded into a number of cardboard boxes about three feet high and two feet wide. While they were doing that, Jimmy said to Lucich, “Hey, you got any sandwich bags—you know, Baggies?”

  “Yeah,” said Lucich.

  “Go get some. I want you to put Rickey’s hands in the Baggies and stick ’em in the freezer.”

  “What!?”

  “You heard me, I wanna stick the kid’s hands in the freezer.”

  Coonan explained that he had an upcoming murder in mind, and he wanted to plant Rickey’s fingerprints on the gun. Lucich got the bags.

  “Mr. Featherstone,” asked prosecutor Warren, her voice steady and reassuring, “do you have any idea how much money Rickey Tassiello owed James Coonan at the time of his death?”

  The answer was $1,250.

  A gasp came from some members of the jury. Featherstone wasn’t surprised. He knew the viciousness of the killing would seem entirely out of proportion to the debt. He knew this, and he had to agree. Of all the beatings, stabbings, murders, and dismemberments, this was the one that bothered him the most.

  * * *

  That evening, in the Witness Protection Unit of the MCC, Featherstone stood under a steaming hot shower pondering his day on the witness stand. The Tassiello murder was something he’d never talked about to anyone until he began cooperating with the government. To relive it now in public was gut-wrenching. And yet, he knew what had to be done—for his own survival. Over the days that followed there would be more horrendous acts to describe, acts he often found hard to admit even to himself. If he hoped to get through it all, he knew he’d have to be willing to look out over that courtroom and say the words: “Yes, I was a scumbag. I was a vicious killer.”

  What really bothered him, though, were the reactions of those he knew in the gallery, many of them friends and relatives of the defendants. He’d seen them snicker and shake their heads in disbelief as he told his tales. It reminded him of the time, many months ago, when he had appeared publicly for the first time since it became known he’d flipped. It was at a pre-trial hearing and many of these same spectators were there. They’d snickered then, too, and made derisive comments. As he was led from the courtroom that day, his sister, his own sister, had shouted out, “He should slit his fuckin’ wrists!”

  But these people—the neighborhood onlookers and some members of his own family—they didn’t know the full story, he was certain of that. They didn’t know of the deceit and betrayal that had led them all to this moment.

  Well, before he was done, if he accomplished anything, the record would be set straight.

  Then we’d see who was calling who a traitor.

  That night Featherstone lay in his cell and stared at the wall. The events of his life played in his head like some weird, disjointed movie with all the reels shown out of sequence. He knew that in less than twelve hours the trial would resume, and once again he’d be asked to reveal his most shameful memories before a packed courtroom. After that, the eight defense attorneys would all have their shot. No doubt they would dwell gleefully on the seamiest aspects of his undeniably seamy life—the troubled psychiatric history, drug addictions, sexual “perversions,” and hopeless, sadistic propensity for violence.

  He told himself the same thing he always did when he was having doubts. That this was not the end. This was the beginning … a new beginning.

  He repeated it over and over like a mantra, then laid his head on the pillow, closed his eyes, and tried to dream he was somewhere far, far away from New York City.

  PART I

  1

  THE GHOSTS OF HELL’S KITCHEN

  The victim never really had a chance. It was a moonless night and the sound of gunfire came so fast he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  The guy next to him got it first. Three quick shots and down he went. There was a strange sound coming from the guy’s mouth as he struggled to say something.

  Fuck this, thought the victim, time to split. He tried to run but only got a few steps before he heard another shot. The bullet hit him somewhere in the body—he knew that because he could feel the impact. But he couldn’t tell where. So he just kept running. Then there was another shot. He knew exactly where that one hit him—in the left shoulder. The pain was immediate. Then a third shot. He wasn’t sure where this one hit him, but he could feel his legs begin to give out. He fell on his back with a thud and for a minute he thought his arm had been blown clean off.

  He heard the person who fired the shots walking across the gravel. He tried to focus, to raise himself up to see what was happening, but he had no strength at all. There was blood, lots of blood, coming from his upper body, and he felt the pain in his arm reverberate through his torso until he was sure his head was going to explode. The last thing he saw, through squinted eyes, was the gunman passing in front of the car’s headlights. Then he heard laughter from the four people inside the car; laughter unlike anything he’d ever heard before. It was more like a cackle, really, and it was so loud it seemed to echo right inside his ears.

  That was it. Darkness came next. For what seemed like an eternity there was complete silence. He thought he was dead. Then he heard someone talking. He thought maybe the gunmen had come back, but there were lights flashing now. An ambulance. Police cars.

  “Hey,” he heard a voice ask. “Can you hear me?”

  He tried to move his lips.

  “Listen,” the voice said. “I’m a police officer. Your friend here is dead and you look pretty bad. You better tell us all you know.”

  “Where’s my left arm?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Your arm’s still there. Can you tell us what happened?”

  Surprisingly, he was able to remember a lot. As he spoke, Patrolman Edward Gordon of the 108th Precinct in Queens jotted down what he could in a notepad and then followed the ambulance to the hospital. Once there, as the victim lay on a gurney in the emergency room, Gordon got the rest of the story.…

  Eight hours earlier, on the evening of April 3, 1966, twenty-six-year-old Charles Canelstein met a guy named Jerry Morales at the Luxor Baths, a steam room on East 46th Street in Manhattan. Canelstein and Morales had never met before, but they seemed to hit it off. After a while, Morales suggested they go for a bite to eat, then see if they couldn’t pick up some women at the Pussycat Lounge. That sounded like a good idea to Canelstein. So they had dinner together at an East Side restaurant, a quick drink at a bar called the Living Room, and arrived at the Pussycat Lounge on 49th Street between 1st and 2nd avenues around 8:30 P.M.

  Right away Canelstein started schmoozing with a girl named Karen who was sitting at the bar. He lost track of Morales, but that didn’t really bother him. Since dinner, he’d begun to realize he didn’t like the guy anyway—he was too loud and obnoxious. But Karen he liked. She was single, Jewish, and just in town from Los Angeles. What more could a guy ask for?

  Things were going great with Karen until a brawny, brown-haired guy, later identified as thirty-six-year-old Eddie Sullivan, approached. “See that stool you�
��re sitting on?” Sullivan said to Canelstein. “That’s my stool. See that girl you’re talking to? That’s my girl.”

  Canelstein didn’t know what to make of all this, so he asked Karen if she knew the guy. When she shrugged and shook her head, Canelstein told Sullivan he must be mistaken. Sullivan had a few nasty words to say and Canelstein responded in kind. Then Sullivan left.

  About twenty minutes later Sullivan returned with a police badge and a gun. Canelstein didn’t know much about guns, but he could see this was a big one, with a barrel that looked to be about six inches long. It was pointed directly at his head.

  “Alright,” said Sullivan, “police business. You’re comin’ with me.”

  “What’s the charge?” asked Canelstein.

  Sullivan grabbed him by the arm and started moving towards the door. “Just get your ass outside.”

  As soon as they stepped outside, Canelstein saw that another person already had Morales up against the wall. This guy was much younger than Sullivan. In fact, Canelstein was struck by how young the kid looked. He was short and stocky, with blond hair, and he looked to Canelstein to be about nineteen years old. Later, the kid would be identified as James Coonan.

  Canelstein and Morales were hustled to a small compact car and forced into the backseat. Things were moving fast now, like a dream, hazy and fragmented. Canelstein could see there were two more guys in the car. The driver was young, but not as young as Coonan. And the kid in the back, he was young too, with blond hair just like Coonan’s. Canelstein and Morales were wedged in the backseat, with Coonan on the right side and the other blondhaired kid on the left.

  Sullivan sat in the front seat and kept his weapon pointed at them at all times. As the car headed north on 3rd Avenue, he smiled. “You know, if you guys had $2,000 on you we could settle this thing right now.”

  Canelstein let the words sink in slowly. At least now he knew what was up; it was a scam, a shakedown. Maybe he and Morales could scrape together enough to satisfy these guys. He told Sullivan they didn’t have anywhere near $2,000, but if they were willing to drive by the Luxor Baths he might be able to get $40 or $50 out of his locker.